Overclockers UK 8Pack Systems Preview and Interview

OCUK 8Pack Systems Preview and Interview

'I'm always the sort of person that wants faster'

Ian Graham Parry, better known in enthusiast circles as 8Pack, is the UK's number one overclocker. Having spent a good portion of his life as a bodybuilder and personal trainer, it's easy to see where he got his name. He's also been overclocking for some 15 years, most of which was spent as a non-competitive hobbyist. However, his efficient results and sound advice on the ASUS ROG forums soon caught the eye of Peter Tan, one of ASUS's head BIOS engineers and also a professional overclocker who goes by the name Shamino. As a result, he began testing new boards, eventually posting some scores on HWBot. From there, it took less than a year for 8Pack to reach the UK number one spot and global top 10.

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His progress didn't go unnoticed, and 8Pack soon took on work within the financial sector tuning systems to increase efficiency. Having made the switch to a professional overclocker, he's been focussed since January on developing his HWBot scores while also appearing at trade shows and competitions around the world, including Computex 2013 where he set a SuperPi 32M world record. His achievements also led him to his current role at Overclockers UK, where he works as a promoter for extreme overclocking in the UK and as head of extreme systems. It's also where we recently had the chance to sit down with 8Pack himself, to talk about overclocking in general as well as the new OCUK Systems by 8Pack, for which the word 'extreme' is something of an understatement...

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The three new OCUK/8Pack systems are designed to offer the absolute pinnacle of current consumer PC performance. The price tags are therefore positively wallet-busting and the hardware utterly drool-worthy. But this isn't just willy waving for the sake of it; it's clear that building what are claimed to be the fastest systems in the world is something 8Pack takes very seriously: 'it's not just about throwing the best components together, it's about being efficient with those components'. That's why every single system sold will be built and individually tweaked for maximum performance solely by 8Pack himself.

You can see the systems in detail over the page. However, as you might expect given that the top end model goes for a cool £9,499.99, the customer service that buyers receive is a little more personal than the norm. As well as building and tweaking the systems himself, 8Pack also pre-selects the hardware for them by hand binning hundreds of components to find those with the very best thermal and voltage/frequency characteristics.

Click to enlarge - Each 8Pack system is delivered in a custom fitted flight case

8Pack's involvement doesn't end with the build process, however, as once the system has been delivered (in a fully padded flight case by a two man team, of course) and set up, the user is given 8Pack's personal contact details for direct support should they have any issues. Any RMA replacements will be performed by 8Pack, for example, with the system being picked up and returned in the same way as its initial delivery. Similarly, the 8Pack for Life scheme also allows users to purchase future upgrades for their systems, which the big man will personally install and tweak at no additional cost. He'll also maintain BIOS profile backups and email users once a month to suggest driver updates and tweaks, for example. As he says, 'it's a full end user package'.

But enough background, let's meet the systems and their creator properly...